Eleven Business/People Orthodoxies – Where Do You Stand?

Command & Control Management Style. Management gurus and business schools have for 20 years been saying the modern organisation needs to be run on different lines, so why, apart from some notable exceptions (which tend to be start-ups), is it so slow in changing?

Managerial Status Symbols. Reserved car parking (admittedly actual name plates are rarer now), office space linked to seniority, (quietly) booking the better rooms at company conferences. Different classes of travel depending not on need but again on seniority.

The closer to the customer the less likely your job is valued, the people the furthest away from customers often earning the most.

That how much somebody earns is a reflection of their quality. ‘We have to pay the market rate for world class managers otherwise we can’t attract them’. There is no data to support this contention.

That people don’t like change. What people don’t like is badly organised, poorly communicated uncontextualised change, attempted by people they have little respect for.

That job security is still attainable. The phrase job security should be deleted from the business lexicon. Managers can’t deliver it and everybody else can’t acquire it. We can only focus on employability, managers in helping to stimulate it, and everybody else taking personal ownership for developing more for themselves.

That being a graduate is a proxy for being better at a job than somebody who isn’t. It isn’t.

That leadership is critical. So why are so many businesses still over managed and under-led?

That service can be a defining source of competitive advantage. If so, why do so few organisations make the required investment to deliver something materially better than what went before?